CO2: Not so funny anymore, is it...

Brueghel's "The Triumph of Death": Is this where civilization is headed?

When I was a child, my Grandfather often joked with me that the Labour government would be taxing the air we breathe next. I would always laugh at him in the “oh, come on Grandad” way that you do when you are too young to spell the word “wisdom”. But that was then, and this, regrettably, is now. Today, my temptation to chortle at this wry but amusing exaggeration of political skulduggery is nowhere to be seen. Instead, I bear the stretched grimace of a man whose sense of humour has failed from the wanton display of insanity that bedevils our daily public discourse.

I genuinely know not what to fear more, the outrageous, repeated, self conscious lies, or the well intentioned lemmings who march to the hypnotic drum of the marionette, flailing and flaggelating their way off the cliff of climate change cultural suicide, and down forever into a dingy netherworld of peat bog scientific ludditery. The flailing and flaggelating would be amusing, even pitiful, if the practitioners had the courtesy to conduct their self immolation out of harms way in the company of similarly deranged and wanton purvayors of outlandish street theatre, as opposed to inflicting their group think nonsense on our public life, and economic policy. Not so for these folk, these puritans of the new Global Holy Eco-Force (tm).

I refer of course to the latest IPCC report, and the accompanying apocalyptic ballyhoo. Suddenly, the great scramble of press conferences, pronouncements, pledges, promises, tree hugging and tough talk reaches a cacophony. Nothing talks quite so tough as a politician when he knows he has the public's undivided attention, quivering and jabbering though they may be in abject fear of the momentous and earth shattering truth that he most solemnly must disclose.

And so, one often imagines, it might go ...

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens, the world is ending. It is. I promise you.

Yes, I know we had a little mixup over that nasty business around WMD in Iraq, but you really need to trust us this time, because this is much much bigger and more serious than any illegal invasion and contravention of international law (our favourite topic if you hadn't noticed). Global warming is a PLANETARY EMERGENCY. You are all going to die unless you stop what you are doing and pay attention to this broadcast. NOW!!! (sirens, claxons, frantic gnashing of teeth)

Now look, I know you are going to bring up that silly little film “The Great Global Warming Swindle” and bore us all to tears with that heavy duty scientific mumbo jumbo, but you just have to face facts, the “consensus” is in, it's a done deal folks. I know, my friends in the hedge fund business told me their carbon portfolio is up 2000% this week, and we all know that the market never lies don't we (except when it's past it's prime).

Brothers and sisters, comrades, we are all in this together. You must do your duty to Queen and Country. Ask not what your country can tax from you, ask what you can loot from your children, and your children's children, and your children's children's children, etc and so on (sorry, too many years in the Exchequers office). So repeat after me, Cap and Trade, Cap and Trade, Cap and Trade. Here endeth the lesson, amen.

Please do wrap up warm, you need to because when we are finished you won't be able to afford to do anything else.

Thankyou and goodnight.

Yes, its true. That nasty, dirty, polluting little virus called mankind is up to its old tricks again. Why oh why did he ever steal that fire from the Gods? Surely he should have just stayed on the plantation like a good like serf and kept out of trouble. Surely the late, great Dr Malthus already made it abundantly clear that a geometric growth pattern for mammalian life forms was incompatible with an arithmetic growth rate of the food supply? But no, and now there are 6 billion of the pesky little blighters, tramping all over our sacred land and breaking wind in the palaces of the mighty. This cannot be, something has to be done!

Dr Thomas Malthus: Do his theories of "carrying capacity"

have something to do with global warming today?

You know once upon a time there was a man called Hitler. He had a pretty effective way of dealing with the “population problem” now didn't he? Yes yes, I know the world has moved on from those “bad old” days, and we could never contemplate such open genocide again in the name of utopian visions of world government or anything sinister like that. So I have an idea, what say we call this new population reduction policy “environmentalism”. The lefties will love it. They can get themselves all fired up about capitalism, consumerism and anti-Americanism and that sort of thing. They like a good rant after all. Just as long as they keep working for the old boys club, they don't need to know who their real masters are now do they. Indeed, the sooner we can get this angry Jacobin mob fired up to shut down our competition, and sweep those obstructive national governments out of the way, the sooner we can go back to running the world the way it was always supposed to be run – to the greater glory of Pax Britannica, Dulce et Decorum Est.

What is next on Dr Moreau's Island of madness, one wonders? A personal carbon tax? Should we all be forcibly fitted with our own catalytic converter at birth?

H.G. Wells' "Dr Moreau": Science, technology and progress are evil.

My fellow concerned citizens of the world, we did not choose this battle, this battle has been forced upon us. The sheer totalitarian insanity of these policies should scare the life out of any sane person, but where is the outrage? WHERE IS IT? Have we all gone stark raving mad, or is apathy the only thing left that we can all agree on? Either we stand up and resist this lunacy, and the people who would replace our rights and freedoms with a global fascist eco-dictatorship, or the world our Grandparents fought to save will cease to be, and we will have failed them as surely as the wise Germans who knew of the enemy within, but did not act to prevent it's rise to power in 1933.

Time is running out - what will we, and more importantly what will you do?